Julie O’Sullivan

From her Leigh - on -Sea studio, Julie presents a body of work shaped by living alongside the transient beauty of the Thames Estuary. A response to the ebb and flow of the tides, smoothing & unsettling, revealing and concealing a myriad of forms and found objects and fragments of history.

The guiding principle or philosophy behind Julie's work is not an intellectual scrutiny of objects but a sense-driven, textural communication, aiming to activate the senses through the sensuality of the form and its material qualities. She has hand-built in stoneware for over 35 years and her work incorporates found sea-glass, seaweed, shells and pebbles taken from her local shoreline.

Julie O'Sullivan (formerly Spurgeon) had a career as a fine jewellery designer before returning to her first creative love, ceramics, graduating in 2008 from Central Saint Martins with a First Class Honours Degree in Ceramic Design. Her degree show project Material Pleasures was developed into commercial production, supplying both Liberty, London and Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly and enabling her to develop her studio practice in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Although Julie now hand-builds using a very coarse-textured stoneware clay, there remains a sensuous delicacy or fragility to her work.